“I’m glad and fortunate that I have been able to continue developing as an artist. I’m not striving for that self-actualisation anymore, moreso the search for truth telling.”
At 57 years old, Bellarine-based blues musician and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Carroll is at peace with her songwriting.
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Known for her work with the likes of GIT, The Pirates Of Beer, Soft Gold, The Left Wing, The Junes and The Cartridge Family, as well as pairings with her late husband, the legendary harmonica player and singer-songwriter Chris Wilson, and her and Wilson’s sons, the acclaimed singer/songwriters Fenn Wilson and George Carroll Wilson, Carroll has had a long and successful career as a mainstay musician. More recently her collective collaboration as the drummer of Tin Stars has taken flight but it’s her solo work that continues to bring Carroll back into the spotlight.
Hailed as the ukulele queen of the Bellarine, Sarah Carroll has added another title to her resume as Australian Musician’s June 2024 Musician of the Month, proudly positioning Carroll back at the top of her game. It’s all thanks to her latest endeavour, album NQR&B (Not Quite Rhythm and Blues), released via Cheersquad Records on 5 July.
“It’s been by far the most successful album release I can recall ever having in my life. All of the feedback I have been receiving about the album has been great. I couldn’t be happier,” Carroll exclaims.
The album success is largely due to Sarah Carroll’s stirring songwriting which sees her draw from life experiences for storytelling, making NQR&B her most vulnerable and authentic body of work to date.
“My songwriting has changed since losing my husband, and also other various big life changes. I feel much more driven to write about things that are true to me rather than inventing characters and inventing stories. I may come back to that but at this point in my life I feel the need to tell the truth as beautifully and as economically and poetically as I can. That’s the train I’m on and people seem to be responding to that really well,” she explains.
“I’ve realised this the more I’ve talked about it but the album does talk about, and the songs deal with, the life experiences I’ve had over the last ten years or so. A couple of the songs have been around for quite a while and then a few of them are newer, but they all in a way deal with the things that I have encountered and had to cope with and work through and realise over the last decade of my life.”
Not just a discount supermarket chain, the cleverly crafted dual play on words of NQR, or ‘not quite right’ partnered with final symbol and letter of &B shifts the album title to take on the notion of the album being “Not Quite Rhythm and Blues” in musically in essence but also contextualises the lyrics. Surprisingly the album title also has a third unexpected nod.
“The other point of reference was the NRBQ, which was a fantastic band that not many people know about, that played in America through the 70’s and into the 80’s. I’m not even sure if there is still an incarnation around these days but they have been an inspiration to me a lot of other musicians so there is a sly reference to them I suppose. That whole NQR idea is really important to me because the whole album is largely about problems, and bumpy bits of life and the times you don’t feel quite right or you don’t feel super confident and how I’ve dealt with those times. It chimes with that too.”
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Serving the storytelling through instrumentation and collaboration, Sarah Carroll enlisted a suite of musicians to bring NQR&B to life including contributions from sons Fenn and George, longtime collaborators and guitarists Leigh Ivin and Shannon Bourne, as well as Bourne’s fellow member of Checkerboard Lounge, Tim Neal on keys and clarinet. Singer-songwriter and close friend Jackie Marshall, also makes an appearance, dueting with Carroll on single ‘I Love The Way We Talk’. Each member was selected not just for their talents but due to the level of trust they held to convey Carroll stories with care.
“I like to think that when we were recording, everybody had their own take on what I was talking about or singing about and injected their own feeling into the performance that they gave. We talked a bit about what would happen and ideas were flying around as they always do in that studio setting when you might try something and you think ‘no no no, let’s change that’, or whatever, but I did find that it came together very easily and I felt extremely heard and understood by everybody that was involved,” Carroll says.
Sarah Carroll will be taking NQR&B on the road for a handful of Victorian shows including celebrations in St Kilda, Creswick, Terang, Castlemaine and a hometown show in Geelong. Be sure to get down and support a local music icon.
Tickets for the Barwon club show can be purchased here.
